Over one in five social media using teens has had an online experience "that …

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A new survey of the social networking habits of teenagers says that the majority have online experiences that help them feel good about themselves or make them feel closer to someone else on the network. 93 percent of teen social media users now have a Facebook account.

"Still, a substantial number of teens report specific negative outcomes from experiences on social network sites," warns Teens, Kindness, and Cruelty on Social Network Sites, produced by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the Family Online Safety Institute, and Cable in the Classroom.

Over one in five social-media-using teens (22 percent) have had an online experience "that ended their friendship with someone."

A quarter of these teens (25 percent) "have had an experience on a social network site that resulted in a face-to-face argument or confrontation with someone."

More than one in ten (13 percent) "have felt nervous about going to school the next day" after a social networking encounter. The same percentage had an experience "that caused a problem with their parents."

Eight percent got into a physical altercation with someone else "because of something that happened on a social network site" and six percent got into trouble at school because of such an experience.

"A Facebook profile can be the site of a budding romance or the staging ground for conflict," the survey observes. "In the past, mediated interactions might have taken place via paper letter or set of wires and a phone between the conversing partners. Now, all internet users have access to a broader digital audience. And in this new environment, social norms of behavior and etiquette are still being formed."

Kind or unkind

Teens, Kindness, and Cruelty is based on conversations between April and July with 799 teenagers ages 12-17 and one of their parents or guardians. The survey reflects an online world in which young people mediate between the mostly positive and pleasurable experience of online social networking, and less frequent but far less pleasant experiences, such as being bullied online or watching peers being bullied.

70 percent of these teenage Internet users say they go online every day. In addition to that 93 percent on Facebook, 24 percent have accounts on MySpace, twelve percent have Twitter logins, seven percent have an account on a Yahoo site, and six percent social network on YouTube. Over half have nothing besides a Facebook account.

Put differently, "account ownership for the vast majority of teen social media users boils down to either 'Facebook only' or 'Facebook plus another site or sites," the report explains. Many lie to get past the age requirements of various venues: "(44%) admit to lying about their age at one time or another so they could access a website or sign up for an online account." 30 percent have shared passwords with others.

What is their assessment of this online environment? Asked,"Overall, in your experience, are people your age mostly kind or mostly unkind to one another on social network sites?"—respondents often told researchers that their peers were "mostly kind" to each other (69 percent). But twenty percent described their friends as "mostly unkind," while another 11 percent checked off the "it depends" category.

And the report says that fifteen percent of teens have been "bullied" via a text message (nine percent), online (eight percent), or a phone call (seven percent).

Pew Internet and American Life

As the chart above indicates, teens are four times more likely to experience social networks as "mostly unkind" than adults. And younger teenage girls ages 12 and 13 are much more likely than anyone else to experience social networking environments in that way. About a third (33 percent) of younger teen girls told these researchers that "people her age are mostly unkind to one another on social network sites."

One in five older girls (20 percent) offered the same impression, in stark contrast to social media using boys age 12 or 13. Only nine percent of them reported seeing social networks in mostly unkind terms.

Negative adjectives

During the course of Pew and company's research, the team ran a series of seven focus groups with teens aged 12 to 19. These focus sessions asked the respondents how they experienced others online, and constructed "word clouds" from the answers. The researchers found that teens "overwhelmingly chose negative adjectives" to depict how their peers acted online.

"Words that appeared frequently included 'rude,' 'mean,' 'fake,' 'crude,' 'over-dramatic,' and 'disrespectful'," the report notes. "Some teens did use positive words like the frequently mentioned 'funny' and the less common 'honest,' 'clever,' 'friendly,' 'entertaining,' and 'sweet,' but overall the frequency of positive words was substantially lower."

Pew Internet and American Life

Some of these children disclosed a tendency among their peers that we at Ars identify in adults as "Comments Derangement Syndrome"—a willingness when presented with a blank comment form to "take all social and conversational norms . . . beat these norms with a club, and stuff them into a black trash bag" for the duration of a discussion.

"Many teens told us that they just felt like different people on these sites and thought that people they see online often act very differently on social media from how they act in person and at school," the survey notes.

Here are some respondent observations excerpted in the report:

MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: That's what a lot of people do. Like, they won't say it to your face, but they will write it online

MIDDLE SCHOOL BOY: I know people who, in person, like refuse to swear. And online, it's every other word.

MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: I think people get—like when they get on Facebook, they get ruthless, stuff like that. . . . They act different in school and stuff like that, but when they get online, they like a totally different person. You get a lot of confidence.

HIGH SCHOOL BOY: [There's] this real quiet girl who go to my school, right, but when she’s on Facebook she talks like some wild—like, be rapping and talking about who she knew and some more stuff and you would, like, never think that's her. You would think that's somebody else . . .

But while teen social networkers may act "different" online, their postings sometimes catch up to them in the real world:

MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: I read what they were talking about online, then I go offline and confront the person who was saying something to her.

MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: Like that’s how most people start fighting because that’s how most of the fights in my school happen - because of some Facebook stuff, because of something you post, or like because somebody didn't like your pictures.

Getting help

So how do we help kids who get caught in this social networking crossfire? The two most obvious resources are peers and parents. The good news is that teens often come to the aid of others being bullied and harassed. 27 percent told the researchers that they "frequently see others defend the victim," and another 20 percent disclosed that they "frequently see others tell the person being mean to stop."

But over half (55 percent) said that most of their peers ignore the bad treatment of others. Nineteen percent admitted that they "frequently see others join in the harassment."

Many of these teens also told researchers that they reach out to people beyond their cyber-cohort. 86 percent said they've gleaned "general advice" from their parents on using the 'Net safely. 70 percent say they've gotten advice from teachers or other adults at school.

58% of teen internet and cell phone users told Pew that "their parents have been the biggest influence on what they think is appropriate or inappropriate when using the internet or a cell phone."

As for the parents themselves, although various "parental control" products are available, most prefer "less technical steps" for watching the online habits of their kids. 77 percent say they've checked a website that their child has visited. Two thirds have searched to see what kind of data showed up about their child.

"More than six in ten teens report that they know their parents have checked their social media profile, and 41% of parents of online teens have friended their child on a social network site," the report observes. But that doesn't necessarily end trouble for the teen in question:

"Friending a teen on social media may have some protective effects, but it is not without its costs, too. Teens whose parents report that they are friends with their child on social network sites are more likely than teens who aren't friends with their parents to say that they had a problem with their parents because of an experience on social media."

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Matthew Lasar
Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Emailmatthew.lasar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@matthewlasar

Kids are assholes. In other news: when it rains, my sidewalk gets wet.

When I was a kid, you either ignored 'em or knocked their block in. Only difference between then and now is that there was physical feedback to these confrontations, instead of a cartoony thumbs-down icon. (Or frowney face, or whatever; I don't use Facebook.) I don't think removing the "hey, this confrontation may end in me explaining black eyes, busted lips, and a bloody nose to my parents" element is particularly beneficial.

(Of course, in my family that was a pretty normal result from leaving my cousins and I unmonitored; not that we were fighting, we just had a high enough tolerance for pain that someone inevitably ended up bleeding.)

Meh, how is this different than the bullying and cruelty that happens in person between teens?I seem to remember a lot of this crap happening when I was a teen before the advent of social media.... maybe it's just because teens can be cruel bastards and bitches sometimes.

It's almost like Facebook is an extension of the real world, complete with jerks, miscommunication, insecurity, threats, and so on.

I wish the study had looked at home many of those behaviors kids experienced in real life; adding "on Facebook" is about as meaningless as doing the same study about these behaviors "on Wednesdays" or "while facing North".

Kids are assholes. In other news: when it rains, my sidewalk gets wet.

When I was a kid, you either ignored 'em or knocked their block in. Only difference between then and now is that there was physical feedback to these confrontations, instead of a cartoony thumbs-down icon. (Or frowney face, or whatever; I don't use Facebook.) I don't think removing the "hey, this confrontation may end in me explaining black eyes, busted lips, and a bloody nose to my parents" element is particularly beneficial.

(Of course, in my family that was a pretty normal result from leaving my cousins and I unmonitored; not that we were fighting, we just had a high enough tolerance for pain that someone inevitably ended up bleeding.)

My personal favourite was always >:(

But yeah, kids are assholes, the fact they're assholes when there's a level of disconnect like there is on facebook doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is that 7% of social media using teens don't have a facebook account. But the fact it was conducted in front of a parent probably means that 7% don't want their parents to know they have a facebook account.

Excuse this long rant, but I actually find sites like Facebook to be pretty good weeders of "fake" friends.

People are more inclined to show their true personalities online due to a false sense of anonymity, and I use that to my advantage sometimes. On quite a few occasions while debating friends on Facebook, I've successfully "baited" some of them into saying some pretty insensitive and retarded things in which they probably wouldn't have said in real life. Needless to say, the ones who have shown their true ignorance are no longer on my friends list.

Though, even without intentionally baiting people, I feel that in the long run, Facebook is a breeding ground for ruined relationships. Maybe I'm just unlucky at times, or I straight-up suck at making friends, but I believe that when push comes to shove, friends can become enemies in no time flat, even the ones you've known your entire life. Facebook merely accelerates that inevitable process.

In the end, I find that Facebook is rather counterproductive to keeping relationships. I'd much prefer to conduct my friendships face-to-face than anything else. My philosophy is: true friends are ones you'd care enough to make a phone call to or grab a beer with at the end of the day. With Facebook, I notice that a lot of people add a bunch of new friends only after meeting them for 5 minutes at who-knows-what party. It sort of becomes a race to see who has more friends on Facebook.

Even though I can't speak for everyone, I'd bet that a large majority of people these days have no idea who half the people are on their friends list.

I think teens have gotten even more stupid as the generations progress.

I mean they fight over pretty much anythign nowadays. Their skin is so thin that a flame online erupts into offline violence. Seriously? If you can't take getting flamed online, disconnect now. You have no place being there.

When i want to feel especially stupid during my days off, I go to youtube and watch young teens getting into fights for no reason whatsoever; or purposely dunking their head onto concrete from a 1 storey drop.

If the quality of our present generation of teens is any indication, we're only a few generations away from self annihilation.

Excuse this long rant, but I actually find sites like Facebook to be pretty good weeders of "fake" friends.

People are more inclined to show their true personalities online due to a false sense of anonymity, and I use that to my advantage sometimes. On quite a few occasions while debating friends on Facebook, I've successfully "baited" some of them into saying some pretty insensitive and retarded things in which they probably wouldn't have said in real life. Needless to say, the ones who have shown their true ignorance are no longer on my friends list.

Though, even without intentionally baiting people, I feel that in the long run, Facebook is a breeding ground for ruined relationships. Maybe I'm just unlucky at times, or I straight-up suck at making friends, but I believe that when push comes to shove, friends can become enemies in no time flat, even the ones you've known your entire life. Facebook merely accelerates that inevitable process.

In the end, I find that Facebook is rather counterproductive to keeping relationships. I'd much prefer to conduct my friendships face-to-face than anything else. My philosophy is: true friends are ones you'd care enough to make a phone call to or grab a beer with at the end of the day. With Facebook, I notice that a lot of people add a bunch of new friends only after meeting them for 5 minutes at who-knows-what party. It sort of becomes a race to see who has more friends on Facebook.

Even though I can't speak for everyone, I'd bet that a large majority of people these days have no idea who half the people are on their friends list.

you do know that if you look for something, you WILL find it right? Baiting someone will almost invaritably mean they take the bait. You can actually do that just as effectively IRL as you can online. That has no bearing on whether someone is your friend or not. Some friends will have vastly different viewpoints than yourself, that doesn't change your relationship with them unless your skin is really thin.

One of my best friend hates Americans (I'm American) and has some pretty distorted world view that is rather ignorant at times. We've been friends 10 years now... Yet he's also been there to help me up EVERY time I was in need, down, depressed, in trouble, need money etc...; whether I ask for help or not. We simply don't see eye to eye on some things and some things he says can be truly bewildering...adn I don't even have to bait him for it.

What I know is that when the chips are down, this guy has me covered. Actions speak louder than words.

I think teens have gotten even more stupid as the generations progress.

I mean they fight over pretty much anythign nowadays. Their skin is so thin that a flame online erupts into offline violence. Seriously? If you can't take getting flamed online, disconnect now. You have no place being there.

When i want to feel especially stupid during my days off, I go to youtube and watch young teens getting into fights for no reason whatsoever; or purposely dunking their head onto concrete from a 1 storey drop.

If the quality of our present generation of teens is any indication, we're only a few generations away from self annihilation.

I don't think this type of behavior is privy to just teenagers these days. Even grown-ups who you thought were well-behaved and courteous in real life turn out to be pretentious, ill-tempered brats when online.

The false sense of security of being partially anonymous is what I think drives many people today to be less friendly than the people of previous generations. Even before there was widespread accessibility to the internet, many times over the phone, you'd encounter pricks that were abnormally rude.

Excuse this long rant, but I actually find sites like Facebook to be pretty good weeders of "fake" friends.

People are more inclined to show their true personalities online due to a false sense of anonymity, and I use that to my advantage sometimes. On quite a few occasions while debating friends on Facebook, I've successfully "baited" some of them into saying some pretty insensitive and retarded things in which they probably wouldn't have said in real life. Needless to say, the ones who have shown their true ignorance are no longer on my friends list.

Though, even without intentionally baiting people, I feel that in the long run, Facebook is a breeding ground for ruined relationships. Maybe I'm just unlucky at times, or I straight-up suck at making friends, but I believe that when push comes to shove, friends can become enemies in no time flat, even the ones you've known your entire life. Facebook merely accelerates that inevitable process.

In the end, I find that Facebook is rather counterproductive to keeping relationships. I'd much prefer to conduct my friendships face-to-face than anything else. My philosophy is: true friends are ones you'd care enough to make a phone call to or grab a beer with at the end of the day. With Facebook, I notice that a lot of people add a bunch of new friends only after meeting them for 5 minutes at who-knows-what party. It sort of becomes a race to see who has more friends on Facebook.

Even though I can't speak for everyone, I'd bet that a large majority of people these days have no idea who half the people are on their friends list.

you do know that if you look for something, you WILL find it right? Baiting someone will almost invaritably mean they take the bait. You can actually do that just as effectively IRL as you can online. That has no bearing on whether someone is your friend or not. Some friends will have vastly different viewpoints than yourself, that doesn't change your relationship with them unless your skin is really thin.

One of my best friend hates Americans (I'm American) and has some pretty distorted world view that is rather ignorant at times. We've been friends 10 years now... Yet he's also been there to help me up EVERY time I was in need, down, depressed, in trouble, need money etc...; whether I ask for help or not. We simply don't see eye to eye on some things and some things he says can be truly bewildering...adn I don't even have to bait him for it.

What I know is that when the chips are down, this guy has me covered. Actions speak louder than words.

Your friend deserves a nice slice of cheesecake for putting up with an American for 10 years ;)

All kidding aside though, I agree that anyone can be verbally provoked whether it's online or not, but you'd have to agree that it's a lot easier to do so on the internet. And don't get me wrong; I don't bait people just for the hell of it. It's when I feel that they've crossed the line significantly that I pull out the baiting to correctly gauge their hostility. Sometimes they take the bait, and sometimes they don't. If they repeatedly do, then the rest is history.

I also have quite a few close friends who have stuck it out with me for well over 15 years, and I'm very grateful for such people. As for the ones who are no longer my friends? Well, let's just say they are few and far between, and justifiably so. As they say, you don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. I don't have anywhere close to 500 million friends, but you get the point haha.

kids can still be assholes, and growing up still sucks. the exact same things used to happen in the "olden days" but instead of saying something on facebook, somebody would talk shit to somebody else, then that person would turn around and tell you. same end result, except now they have a quicker turnaround time.

It's almost like Facebook is an extension of the real world, complete with jerks, miscommunication, insecurity, threats, and so on.

I wish the study had looked at home many of those behaviors kids experienced in real life; adding "on Facebook" is about as meaningless as doing the same study about these behaviors "on Wednesdays" or "while facing North".

This cannot be stressed enough. It sort of reminds me how people add something a little extra to a "norm" just to make it sound different. Instead of studying what someone else might have, we have to add something extra? What's next, studying this exact same phenomenon "on Twitter"? Is the study after that going to be "on Google+"?

Part of the article where a girl says "MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: That's what a lot of people do. Like, they won't say it to your face, but they will write it online…" Maybe they will THINK it, but not say it. Maybe they will say it behind your back. What in the hell does doing a survey "on facebook" make a difference? These are just typical behaviors manifested in the medium to which people have an outlet. I really don't see how this survey can help a damn thing, because it applies the basic problems to the angle of "on facebook". DUH./end rant

Edit: After reading CrackedLCD's comment that does bring some things to light, but the same can be said while texting, or even in person. Suppose you walk into a conversation and only catch part of it. You could take the entire context wrong, and the visual cues.

It's almost like Facebook is an extension of the real world, complete with jerks, miscommunication, insecurity, threats, and so on.

I wish the study had looked at home many of those behaviors kids experienced in real life; adding "on Facebook" is about as meaningless as doing the same study about these behaviors "on Wednesdays" or "while facing North".

Beyond the standard teen/adult cruelty… It's worse than real life because users lack certain visual & audible cues that are present in face-to-face communications. This can lead to a lot of things getting taken the wrong way, which causes a lot of unnecessary rifts.

If I say: "Ha ha. Funny."

What is the context? Am I rolling my eyes? Honestly laughing out loud, or merely bemused? Or is it sarcasm? Depending on what the other person was expecting and how they interpret the reaction, a simple response like that can totally blow up.

Kids already lack some of the brainpower to process certain social cues, pulling even more context from them only makes deciphering input harder.

As someone who got picked on when I was young I'd like to punch you in the face. Lucky for you there's an internet in the way. :-)

The problem isn't that kids need to "grow up" or "get over it". The problem is that schools are in general pretty horrible at enforcing any kind of important rules. In the "real world" there are ways to handle people who behave badly. Basically if you punch someone in the real world you go to jail (or at least to the police) in school it's expected behavior.

I'm not convinced that, without the medium of facebook and other social media, these mean comments and bad-spirited actions wouldn't proliferate through some other medium, e.g. playground gossip, texting etc. ...though I do recognise that the slight feeling of unaccountability gifted us by the web could cause this kind of thing to be worse than it would other be.

to the author, be careful injecting confusing comedy - link to the tongue-in-cheek internet disorders piece - in what was otherwise a straightforward scientific article. Seemed very out of place and I hope ars staff don't view that silliness as factual or anything other than fun.

Over one in five social-media-using teens (22 percent) have had an online experience "that ended their friendship with someone."

A quarter of these teens (25 percent) "have had an experience on a social network site that resulted in a face-to-face argument or confrontation with someone." More than one in ten (13 percent) "have felt nervous about going to school the next day" after a social networking encounter. The same percentage had an experience "that caused a problem with their parents." Eight percent got into a physical altercation with someone else "because of something that happened on a social network site" and six percent got into trouble at school because of such an experience.

Hmmm, sounds like real life to me.When people get together this sort of stuff happens, just swap FB for school playground and it would sound normal..

Quote:

During the course of Pew and company's research, the team ran a series of seven focus groups with teens aged 12 to 19. These focus sessions asked the respondents how they experienced others online, and constructed "word clouds" from the answers. The researchers found that teens "overwhelmingly chose negative adjectives" to depict how their peers acted online.

"Words that appeared frequently included 'rude,' 'mean,' 'fake,' 'crude,' 'over-dramatic,' and 'disrespectful'," the report notes. "Some teens did use positive words like the frequently mentioned 'funny' and the less common 'honest,' 'clever,' 'friendly,' 'entertaining,' and 'sweet,' but overall the frequency of positive words was substantially lower."

Again sounds like any sort of internet forum where people can post views about all sorts of things..You are bound to get trolls everywhere!

People tend to think of themselves as the wronged party. A verbal bully who keeps pushing and pushing until they are physically hurt might see their verbal victim as their physical bully and use the physical act as justification for the verbal abuse.

Stop blaming the medium and look more at the culture. It's more of an American thing than it is over here in Asia. Teens get along far better here. Sure there is some fighting and drama, but nowhere near what goes on in the US.

Stop blaming the medium and look more at the culture. It's more of an American thing than it is over here in Asia. Teens get along far better here. Sure there is some fighting and drama, but nowhere near what goes on in the US.

usually this is seen because america talks about its problems to death. but human nature is human nature, no one is immune.

kids can stillwill always be assholes, and growing up still suckswill always suck.

It's the nature of being trapped with hundreds of your peers for hours at a time while going through puberty and learning to socialize on a more complex level. There's pretty much no avoiding the trials of a teenager.

MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: That's what a lot of people do. Like, they won't say it to your face, but they will write it online…

MIDDLE SCHOOL BOY: I know people who, in person, like refuse to swear. And online, it's every other word.

MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: I think people get—like when they get on Facebook, they get ruthless, stuff like that. . . . They act different in school and stuff like that, but when they get online, they like a totally different person. You get a lot of confidence.

HIGH SCHOOL BOY: [There's] this real quiet girl who go to my school, right, but when she’s on Facebook she talks like some wild—like, be rapping and talking about who she knew and some more stuff and you would, like, never think that's her. You would think that's somebody else . . .

MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: I read what they were talking about online, then I go offline and confront the person who was saying something to her.

MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: …Like that’s how most people start fighting because that’s how most of the fights in my school happen - because of some Facebook stuff, because of something you post, or like because somebody didn't like your pictures.

All kidding aside though, I agree that anyone can be verbally provoked whether it's online or not, but you'd have to agree that it's a lot easier to do so on the internet. And don't get me wrong; I don't bait people just for the hell of it. It's when I feel that they've crossed the line significantly that I pull out the baiting to correctly gauge their hostility. Sometimes they take the bait, and sometimes they don't. If they repeatedly do, then the rest is history.

So, wait a minute. You get into a conversation/debate with someone (supposedly a friend) and they get worked up and start spouting shit. You then push them farther (baiting) and then act all superior and decide not to be friends with them anymore? Awfully manipulative process to select friends.